A Storm Brews in a Sunny Town

So far, the boycott of the L.A. Times by the Ventura County town of Santa Paula has not hit us as hard as the 10,000 subscription cancellations by apologists for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But you never know.

An angry mob of 15 or 20 people demonstrated outside The Times’ Ventura office last Friday, and you had the sense that all 30,000 residents of Santa Paula were with them in spirit. So I headed up there at first chance, trying to head off a revolution.

Santa Paula has had a run of tough luck, it seems. The only hospital is shuttered, Caltrans removed the burg’s name from highway signs and the town calls itself the Citrus Capital of the World, even as that industry is reeling from foreign competition.

Then along came The Times, delivering the lowest blow of all.

Fourteen-year-old Derek Luna always looks for his beloved hometown on The Times’ weather map, which sits on the back of the California section. One morning, he discovered he had no weather, and no hometown.

Santa Paula had been vaporized.

Derek mentioned this alarming development to his dad, City Councilman Ray Luna, who soon discovered that the tragic news had reached Victor’s Donuts and the Whistlestop Cafe. By then, City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz was moving faster than a freak tornado.

The Santa Paula City Council swiftly passed a resolution denouncing The Times in the pointed language of Whereases and Therefores, threatening an advertising boycott if the town was not put back on the map.

One peeved councilman suggested Santa Paula gets so little respect, it should change its name to “Rodney Dangerfield.” Another wondered if Santa Paula got the boot because its population is 70% Latino.

We’re constantly accused of one bias or another, but I assure you there was no executive decision to withhold weather forecasts from Latinos. Pico Rivera is on the map, for crying out loud, and I don’t think that’s a Scandinavian community.

As Times reps explained to town officials, the weather source for Santa Paula was a county fire station west of the city limits, and when firefighters were out on a call, we couldn’t get the scoop.

Besides, you can’t fit every town in Southern California on a map the size of a napkin. So Santa Paula got dropped, and Hesperia got promoted.

“If they’re saying there’s more happening in Hesperia than there is in Santa Paula,” Bobkiewicz told the Ventura County Star, “I beg to differ with the Los Angeles Times.”

(Are you going to take this sitting down, Hesperia?)

To get to Santa Paula, you take the Ventura Freeway to California 126, and head east along lovely green foothills. What you’ll find is a quaint village, and although you wouldn’t use the word “bustling” to describe the turn-of-the-century downtown, there’s potential galore.

That’s why, at last week’s annual Chamber of Commerce dinner, the theme was “Our Future Is So Bright.”

How bright, you ask?

“Everyone wore sunglasses to the dinner,” Bobkiewicz said.

Bobkiewicz and I went to La Cabana for lunch, and owner Gabie Araiza laid into The Times.

“We have good weather here, gee willikers, and people should know about our little town,” she said, threatening to cancel her subscription.

First off, I haven’t heard “gee willikers” since “Hazel” was on TV. And secondly, I’ve never seen a town so proud of its weather.

Everybody claims something miraculous happens at Wells Road to the west, where the icky marine climate stops cold, and God Himself smiles warmly on Santa Paula.

“That’s why it’s the citrus capital of the world,” Bobkiewicz said, and after about the 10th time I’d heard this, I asked if it was true that such a small town could possibly be the world’s leading producer.

“That doesn’t matter,” Bobkiewicz said tersely. “It’s the citrus capital.”

It’s also “a sleeping giant” and the “jewel of the county,” according to Pam Colvard of Pamela’s Tea Room.

At the twice-weekly Santa Paula Times, reporter Peggy Kelly complained that my corporate, un-locally owned newspaper cares only about crime and other negative Santa Paula news, instead of how “beautiful and bucolic” the town is. Not to mention the “perfect” weather.

“Part 1 crimes were down 49% last year,” Publisher Don Johnson added.

I was already aware of this. On my three-hour tour with Bobkiewicz, I had learned everything there is to know about the obvious and less-visible charms of Santa Paula. This, of course, was exactly what Bobkiewicz had in mind when he led the march on The Times’ Ventura office -- a march covered by three TV stations.

If everybody already knows the weather is perfect all the time, I asked Johnson, why do they need to read this in the L.A. Times?

“It has nothing to do with the weather,” he said. “It has to do with taking our name off something, and we lose our identity.”

Santa Paula’s town fathers had an answer, naturally, when I reminded them this never would have happened if the fire station hadn’t let us down. They sent me out to Ken Chapman’s lemon ranch, where Chapman keeps his own weather station and kindly volunteered to be The Times’ new source.

My colleagues here at the Evil Empire are checking out Chapman’s website (www.spweather.net), and say they may restore Santa Paula to the map when the weather page is redesigned in the near future.

Look, I’ll admit it -- I love an underdog. So I hereby promise to run Santa Paula’s weather at the bottom of every column until the town is back on the map.

It was 59 Thursday at 4:49 p.m. at Ken Chapman’s lemon ranch. Look for a high of 66 today with partly cloudy skies.

No, wait.

Partly sunny skies.

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Steve Lopez can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com.